Reggae Nights

I didn't take the picture. But this was where the race was today. It was a pretty cool setting. Just imagine the above with a lot of cream frosting. or snow.

Today! It's a day. And you are going to read about it.

Started off COLD and early. My new found buddy Erik DeRoche, who is a part of the ESNW network of coaches, drove down all the way from Bellingham to do a race in Fort Steilacoom, which is south of Tacoma, wow that's a lot of driving. The night before the race I called him with a 11th hour request for a bike to use for the race and he came through!

So we got there. Cold cold cold but the sun was out which helped a bit. Did I mention cold. The folks were there too, glad they came. They are 28x more studly than any other sextagenarians that I know. The race was a 5k run/15 mile (3x5 mile loop)/5k run offroad duathlon put on by my friend Roger at 4th Dimension Racing along with another excellent dude, Kevin Reinkensmeyer, with whom I had chatted several times but finally got to meet in person.

With a PRE-race raffle (that's different, normally raffles are before the race..interesting..) out of the way we started the 5k. Pretty soon into it my lack of fitness (relatively speaking) and maybe a hard week of training became apparent and I knew I should just make it a fun day out of it. Or rather, not focus on trying to beat other people but just enjoy the experience. The run course was really flat, except for one short, steep, sweet hill. Got the run done, started the bike.

I like to think of the bike portion as a learning experience; I learned that:

1. Look Keo pedals SUCKSUCKSUCKSUCK as mtb pedals, especially in the snow/mud. I just could NOT get my cleats back into the pedals. Not without manually cleaning them out.

2. My bike handling skills are often exceeded by my enthusiasm for speed.

3. I may have cussed a bit. At the aforementioned pedal situation. I ended up falling over/sideways more than I would numerically care to admit.

The course was what I would call tastefully technical; enough to make it pretty interesting but not so much that it was killing me. After two loops, unfortunately my steed faltered and I also realized that were I to complete the 3rd loop I would be really late getting back for stuff in the afternoon. Coming into the transition area, I found my folks, they had decided that one loop was good enough for them. So I ran a little bit, but my calf felt like there was a bee sting (weird...we'll see if that comes back) on it and I realized Erik was going to finish soon. So I headed back and yup about 7 minutes later he comes in and wins! Nice work Erik.

What else about the day...I discovered this book which looks really really funny. I have a new movie to watch, Bright Star. It's about John Keats. We did a big unit on Keats' poetry in 11th grade english and I really dug his work then. Man, I was so....melodramatic then. Maybe this'll rekindle some of it.

And as to Reggae Nights, I discovered a burned CD I have consisting exclusively of lots and lots of Reggae. Awesome.